The present disclosure relates generally to communication systems, and more particularly, to decoding of system information blocks (SIBs) at a user equipment (UE) in a wireless communications system.
Wireless communication systems are widely deployed to provide various telecommunication services such as telephony, video, data, messaging, and broadcasts. Typical wireless communication systems may employ multiple-access technologies capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing available system resources. Examples of such multiple-access technologies include code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency division multiple access (FDMA) systems, orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems, single-carrier frequency division multiple access (SC-FDMA) systems, and time division synchronous code division multiple access (TD-SCDMA) systems.
These multiple access technologies have been adopted in various telecommunication standards to provide a common protocol that enables different wireless devices to communicate on a municipal, national, regional, and even global level. An example telecommunication standard is Long Term Evolution (LTE). LTE is a set of enhancements to the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) mobile standard promulgated by Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). LTE is designed to support mobile broadband access through improved spectral efficiency, lowered costs, and improved services using OFDMA on the downlink, SC-FDMA on the uplink, and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna technology. However, as the demand for mobile broadband access continues to increase, there exists a need for further improvements in LTE technology. These improvements may also be applicable to other multi-access technologies and the telecommunication standards that employ these technologies.
In wireless networks (e.g., LTE or UMTS networks), decoding of system information blocks (SIBs) consumes a significant amount of power and time (e.g., processing resources) at a UE. For example, when a UE is mobile, the UE may frequently perform cell reselections and read (e.g., decode) the SIBs broadcasted from the cells. In some cases, even stationary UEs, e.g., utility meters, that are camped on a particular cell may need to re-read SIBs as the stored system information becomes invalid after a certain time (e.g., three hours in LTE and six hours in UMTS). In some cases, a UE may be required to decode a SIB even when the information contained in SIB is not useful to the UE. For example, a stationary UE supporting a particular radio access technology (RAT) may be forced to read SIBs that contain information regarding a RAT not supported by the stationary UE.
As such, improvements in decoding of SIBs in a wireless communications system are needed.